The Learner

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 I wrote an article  about a year or so ago on the sweeping spate of dirty politics taking the centre stage of my state Kano , Nigeria . It solely focused on the two leading archrivals, the present governor of the state, Engr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and his predecessor, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau. Their politicking forays into the daily lives of Kano people. Often, loyalty or otherwise to one of them defines our identity. No matter how hard one tries to reconcile the two, he or she is bound to fail. They are practically seen as totally the opposite of the other like fire and water; loving both is believed to be incompatible. Whatever, I stand to defy this fallacy. It’s my humble belief that both did something for the state; both deserve some respect; both are humans, not demons; and neither performed to a T. A few days ago, a very good, elder friend of mine awkwardly described my behaviour of what he calls ‘proving people wrong’ as chil...

This article was written by BALA MUHAMMAD and first published by Weekly Trust (Nigeria) on Saturday, 22 September 2012. It’s however very relevant as ever. The recent attack on the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo’s office in Paris behooved me to reproduce it here. Inasmuch as I don’t condone the murder, the actions of the newspaper are downright condemnable.    _________________________________________________________   His name is Muhammad. And all of us, now One and a Half Billion Souls and counting, love him beyond compare. In fact we so love him that others just can’t understand or comprehend. They don’t get it, and they can’t get it, for they know not this kind of love. We love him more than we love our parents; indeed we love him more than we love ourselves! The moment we hear his name invoked, we immediately add: “May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him.” O we so love him, Muhammad! He left us more than 14 centuries ago, yet it...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com @muhsin234 A dictionary definition of the word “trust” says: “ If you trust someone, you believe they are honest and sincere and will not deliberately do anything to harm you. ” Many of us used to take the famous Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), Nigeria as such, for in addition to that word, its name includes another resolute, confirmatory word: guaranty. However, they have recently betrayed that name by acting in its exact opposite. We are now gravely harmed by them; and the bank's handlers are consistently being insincere and dishonest to us. It was and still is a bombshell, as a friend described it, for the GTB users living in India, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea and St. Kitts waking up with our Naira MasterCard as a little better than a piece of sh*t. Yes, for one cannot withdraw a Kobo with it from any ATM even if one has trillions in his/her account. The bank blocked all our cards without any deliberation on the con...